Focus being pulled from the important matters

Tom Pinney

I thought about making this another column with three parts, but I don’t want to leave any stone unturned here. While I’ve been focused on the clown-car in Washington, there’s been something else happening under my nose right here in Missouri.

Last week, Gov. Eric Greitens finished filling up the Missouri State Board of Education with five interim members, and three of them called for a special closed meeting to “discuss personnel.”

Those who have been reading the writing on the wall since Greitens was elected know what this meeting will be about.

On the campaign trail and in office, Greitens proved himself to be an enemy of public schools and a champion of voucher programs and charter schools by vocally supporting legislation for both. As a brief reminder, voucher programs would take tax money from public school districts and send that money either to other public school districts or private/parochial schools, and charter schools are currently limited to Kansas City and St. Louis in the state of Missouri.

Here in District 1 and Nodaway County, we’ve been very loud in State Representative Allen Andrews’ ears to stop these things from happening because we know the importance of public education in our towns and communities. As a reminder, Andrews voted against his party to help defeat a bill earlier this session that would have expanded charter school coverage throughout the state and another bill that would have created the voucher program.

Credit where credit is due, and since this is the opinion page, here’s that credit: kudos to Andrews for doing what’s right and prioritizing his constituents over his party. But while Andrews and District 1 celebrated that victory, Greitens still looked for ways to get his own win.

Over the summer and into the fall, Greitens replaced members of the State Board of Education with his own people, which on its face was not only allowable and part of his duties as governor, but seemed innocent enough at the time.

Or at least, it did until September, when one of Greitens’ picks was changed without a public announcement. The Springfield News-Leader reported September 18 that he withdrew his appointment of Springfield resident Missy Gelner and was replacing her with an appointment of Heidi Crane, the CFO of Springfield-based Copy Products, Inc.

Gelner was quoted expressing concern “about the pressure (she had) recently experienced to make rash leadership decisions.” The next day, U.S. News & World Report said that Crane had rejected the appointment without comment.

But other comments shed light on why Crane might have stepped away. State Board President Charles Shields and board member Michael Jones noted that Greitens was attempting to influence his appointees to oust current DESE Commissioner Margie Vandeven, and Gelner’s next comment – that she refused to comply with Greitens’ edict to oust Vandeven – corroborates that story.

Again, nothing about replacing a DESE commissioner is necessarily illegal or unprecedented, as the U.S. News & World Report noted. However, the Report explained that both Shields and Jones had said it was unusual for the sitting governor to influence board appointees. Jones lambasted Greitens as an “amateur” while Shields said Greitens’ attempts to get Vandeven fired were “incompetent.”

This is where I channel the version of myself that wanted to become a teacher and has roughly 75 percent of a master’s degree in education and, step by step, examine the problems and dynamics at play here.

Initially, the commissioner of education does not and should not serve at the pleasure of the governor. The commissioner’s job is to make sure that education in the state of Missouri works for the students across the state.

In the same way, the state board of education should not serve at the governor’s pleasure either. They are there to decide what’s best for the students and should never be influenced one way or another by the sitting governor.

Second, our governor’s continued efforts to influence the board members show an attempt to get what he wants through any means necessary. The state legislature couldn’t follow through with charter school expansion and voucher programs, so he’s going to go through the state board of education and DESE from the top down.

This isn’t just assertion or hearsay. One of his appointees, Delbert Scott, is a member of the Missouri Charter Public School Commission and the president of Kansas Christian College. He withdrew because he was ineligible to serve on the board unless he resigned from his other posts.

In addition, Greitens appointed Marvin Jungmeyer on Thursday to serve as an interim member, which gave him a majority, and on Friday, three other interim appointees – Eddy Justice, Doug Russell and Claudia Onate Greim – called for the special meeting to “discuss personnel issues.” And if that wasn’t enough, the fifth appointee, John T. Sumners, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he was “tremendously troubled” and “concerned that we are asking a brand new member … to vote on an issue of this magnitude.” For the record, he also said that he knew his view on the matter may cost him his job.

And to make it even more obvious, Greitens used money from his campaign fund (an ethics violation for which he was cited) to bring charter school advocate and former charter school COO Kenneth Zeff to Missouri earlier this year.

I’m preaching to the choir about how bad this is, because rural Missouri is mostly against charter schools. However, rural Missouri also voted for Eric Greitens overwhelmingly, and since it’s my job as a reporter to hold public servants accountable, I’m doing just that.

I encourage you to stay in Andrews’ ear about how bad this is for public education in Missouri and hope that he can get in Greitens’ ear about it. Contact Sen. Dan Hageman and stay on him as well. Both of them had contact info run with their columns yesterday; fill up their voicemail, email and snail mail inboxes.

Get mad. Get active. Don’t stop writing.

And remember that Greitens is up for re-election in 2020. If this is the kind of regard that he shows toward our school systems, then maybe he needs to have a different job in 2021.

Tom Pinney is a news reporter for the Maryville Daily Forum.